"Aside from the fact that this is clearly a lame attempt to attract publicity on the back of a major video game release," writes Forbes video game writer David Ewalt, "PETA seems to have missed the single biggest theme of the Pokémon series: That Pokémon should be treated humanely and live as our equals."

The animal rights group has a long history of missing the point. They have an even longer history of trying to gain attention whether or not that attention will further their supposed cause.

Nor is this the first time the anti-Pokémon group has come out against video games and their digital "cruelty" toward animals.

I can count four other times video games have come into the PETA crosshairs.

1. PETA urges players to save the seals in World of Warcraft

Way, way back in 2009 PETA urged its members to log in to World of Warcraft and do battle against seal hunters in the Level 70+ region of the Howling Fjord where apparently Horde players were clubbing a bunch of digital baby seals to death.

"Thrall refused to ban the slaughter of seals, despite multiple requests from the Alliance to do so, because Orgrimmar stands to make a large profit from the fur," PETA said in a blog post on the matter.

Talk about slacktivism.

This might all seem like good, clean fun - a way to get the kids involved maybe - if it weren't for what happened to Mario two years later.

The really ludicrous thing about this campaign is that the Tanooki suit was first spotted in North America in 1990, when the suit was discovered by multitudes of gamers (including yours truly) in Super Mario Bros. 3. It was a delightful find, too, giving us the power of flight.

This is why millions of gamers, to this day, wear raccoon suits and other fur items wherever we go.

Of course, PETA would have none of it - 21 years later - stating that "Tanukis are real-life raccoon dogs who are beaten and, as PETA's undercover exposés show, often skinned alive for their fur."

Just like in Super Mario Bros.

3. Call of Duty is apparently violent toward animals

When I think about Call of Duty I often think about killing people.

And not just because the franchise has gone so far down hill. Also because that's what you do in Call of Duty. You kill and kill and kill some more.

And most of the organic life forms you shoot full of bullets or burn to death happen to be homo sapiens.

But according to PETA, the real problem with Call of Duty is that it contains cruelty to dogs.

Mercifully, the anti-fun organization decided to forgo making a hideously violent 2D sidescroller and instead sent Activision a care basket including copies of Nintendogs.

4. Watch Out Dishonored, PETA says Battlefield 3 is cruel to rats

There must be an ethical dilemma when it comes to cats and rats. Cats kill rats, and that - if I'm not mistaken - qualifies as cruelty toward animals.

So what's to be done with the cats? Pretty soon we have a reverse of the Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly rhyme on our hands.

Oh, and thanks to jerks like me covering this bad crazy, you can probably expect a bunch more browser-based games from the video game developer qua animal rights group qua attention-mongers.

Though this last one must violate copyright...mustn't it?

In all seriousness though, this is like the flimsier version of the "Shooter killed 15 people because of Call of Duty" argument we see every time the press encounters a mass shooting with even the most tangential relationship to video games.

And I know...I really do...none of this should get us riled up, and we'd all be better off ignoring it. But I can't help myself. It's all so silly, how can we not pay attention to it?

At some point the folks at PETA are going to need to do some soul-searching and figure out how they can be taken seriously again.

These video game stunts are far milder than many of the crazy practices the organization engages in on a regular basis, some of which have real-world repercussions especially to medical advances.